Goodness cannot be captured or killed. We see this already in the earthly life of Jesus. There are a number of passages in the Gospels which give the impression that Jesus was somehow highly elusive and difficult to capture. It seems that until Jesus consents to His own capture, nobody can lay a hand on Him. We see this played out a number of times: Early on in His ministry, when His own townsfolk get upset with His message and lead Him to the brow of a hill to hurl Him to His death, we are told that “He slipped through the crowd and went away.” Later when the authorities try to arrest Jesus we are told simply that “He slipped away.” And, in yet another incident when Jesus is in the temple area and they try to arrest Him, the text simply says that He left the temple area and “no one laid a hand upon Him because His hour had not yet come.”
Why the inability to take Jesus captive? Was Jesus so physically adept and elusive that no one could imprison Him?
These stories of Jesus “slipping away” are highly symbolic. The lesson is not that Jesus was physically deft and elusive, but rather that the word of God, the grace of God, the goodness of God and power of God can never be captured, held captive or ultimately killed. They are adept. They can never be held captive, can never be killed and even when seemingly they are killed, the stone that entombs them always eventually rolls back and releases them. Goodness continues to resurrect from every sort of grave.
And it is this, the constant resurrection of goodness, not that of viciousness and evil, which speaks the deepest truth about our world and our lives. The Jewish-Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002, gives a poignant testimony of this. As a young boy he had been in a Nazi death camp, but what he remembered most afterwards from this experience was not the injustice, cruelty and death he saw there, but rather some acts of goodness, kindness and altruism he witnessed amidst that evil. After the war, it left him wanting to read the lives of saints rather than biographies of war. The appearance of goodness fascinated him. To his mind, evil is explicable, but goodness? Who can explain it? What is its source? Why does it spring up over and over again all over the Earth, and in every kind of situation?
It springs up everywhere because God’s goodness and power lie at the source of all being and life. This is what is revealed in the Resurrection of Jesus. What the Resurrection reveals is that the ultimate source of all that, of all being and life, is gracious, good and loving. Moreover, it also reveals that graciousness, goodness and love are the ultimate power inside reality. They will have the final word and they will never be captured, derailed, killed or ultimately ignored. They will break through, ceaselessly, forever. In the end, too, as Kertesz suggests, they are more fascinating than evil.
And so we are in safe hands. No matter how bad the news on a given day, no matter how threatened our lives are on a given day, no matter how intimidating the neighbourhood or global bully, no matter how unjust and cruel a situation, and no matter how omnipotent are anger and hatred, love and goodness will reappear and ultimately triumph.
Jesus taught that the source of all life and being is benign and loving. He promised too that our end will be benign and loving. In the resurrection of Jesus, God showed that God has the power to deliver on that promise. Goodness and love will triumph! The ending of our story, both that of our world and that of our individual lives, is already written — and it is a happy ending! We are already saved. Goodness is guaranteed. Kindness will meet us. We only need to live in the face of that wonderful truth.
They couldn’t arrest Jesus until He Himself allowed it. They put His dead body in a tomb and sealed it with a stone, but the stone rolled away. His disciples abandoned Him in His trials, but they eventually returned more committed than ever. They persecuted and killed His first disciples, but that only served to spread His message.
The churches have been unfaithful sometimes, but God just slipped away from those particular temple precincts. God has been declared dead countless time, but yet a billion people just celebrated Easter.
Goodness cannot be killed. Believe it!
(Fr. Rolheiser can be reached at ronrolheiser.com.)